But I’m tired, OK?
This post comes hot on the heels of the last one, but just seems to be how May is working for me. Nary five days after a pretty packed Golden Week I found myself boarding a night bus down to Kyoto for Bitsummit Vol. 6 — Japan’s largest independent game show.
Somewhere in the depths of a JET facebook page (I think) there had been a call for volunteers. I applied about a week before the event in characteristic fashion, and was added to the relevant Facebook group, entitled ‘Bitsummit 2018 Interpreters.’ For someone who had just expected to be stacking some chairs and whatnot, this development was a worrying one. The fact that everyone introducing themselves seemed to work professionally in game localisation only raised this tension. All the same, the buses were booked, so I ticked the ‘non-interpretation help’ box and did some calming breathing exercises.
The bus down was about as pleasant as one might expect, and I arrived at Kyoto station at 6 o’clock to find absolutely nowhere to sit down. I consoled myself with a can of coffee and set off walking to the exhibition centre.
As expected, there I met about 40 foreigners in various stages of discomfort. A meeting was called to welcome us and split us into teams — I was given my yellow t-shirt and INTERPRETER badge and we plunged into the hall proper.
While there were some large stalls at the front from like likes of Nintendo and Sony, most of the room was taken up by about a hundred tables. These were the indie developers, who had come with TVs, consoles, laptops, PCs, banners and an impressive amount of papercraft in at least one instance.
We had half an hour to wander round before the show proper opened, during which time I played a game where the player, a naked man holding a box around his midriff, must run home and evade detection by crouching down inside the box whenever someone walked past. This was controlled by an actual cardboard box that I raised or lowered to move faster or hide, respectively.
I also tried my first VR game — a kind of diving experience where I had to move my arms breaststroke-fashion to head down to the bottom and collect what looked like a bunch of grapes. The experience was as disorientating as I had feared, especially when I misjudged my speed and went crashing into the ocean floor. Thankfully I was spared the nausea sometimes associated with these things.
The morning was spent pretty much entirely in a state of sensory overload. Luckily, most of the foreign guests at the event had at least a smattering of Japanese, and the Japanese visitors generally suffered through the language barrier rather than call for help. I was called upon only once, and then for a question so bizarre that I was no help anyway. I realised later that, with my arms folded in a relaxed manner, my badge was covered up — this might have had something to do with the lack of work.
After lunch I was placed in a different area and set to work actually doing something. I introduced myself to a few more developers and spent most of my time with Al, creator of Eatvolve. I was able to help in a few small ways, and steadily got more proactive about asking people if they needed help or had questions. Before I knew it I was interpreting like some sort of interpreter or something!
Bitsummit is not, by game show standards, an especially high-octane event. This meant I was able to spend plenty of time chatting to developers and playing the games themselves. One of the more interesting ones was Super Slime Arena. It’s an party fighting game with two twists. Firstly, your character changes each time you are killed, which happens a lot when every attack kills in one hit. Secondly, it supports a frankly silly number and variety of controllers. Alongside the pretty standard keyboard, Xbox/Playstation/Gamecube controllers and joystick, we could use an N64 controller, a remote control plane controller, a fishing rod controller (possibly for the Dreamcast), a fighting game pad, a Guitar Hero guitar and the bongos from the legendary Donkey Konga Gamecube games.
Day 1 ended with a large sigh from all involved. It had been a relaxed atmosphere but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been awfully busy. I returned for a spell to my Airbnb room which turned out very literally to be a woman’s flat. She was away in Osaka for the night so I felt like something of an intruder.
In the evening I joined about an hundred other developers, journalists and interpreters by the river for an informal party. We made a decent nuisance of ourselves and also managed to stay out until nearly 4am. This did us no favours the next day.
I just about managed to arrive at the venue before Day 2 formally began. Having hit my stride a bit more with interpretation I leapt into it, but this backfired a little when I got taken aside by someone from NHK to interview the head of a rather large developer — at this point I had to step aside for everyone’s sake.
I was working rather more (and rather slower) this day, and os got rather less chance to play games. One that stood out, still, was Ultra Space Battle Brawl, a cross between Pong and a side-on fighting game replete with 80s garishness. I interpreted for an interview between some Osaka-based students and a representative of Toge Productions, which was set up to promote Indonesian games like this one worldwide. A card by the TV in the centre of their area advertised a patch to those who could beat the developer, and at the very end of the show (and on my second attempt of the day) I was victorious. I wonder if, given the timing, this was less to do with my skill and more to do with them wanting to get both of them handed out.
Finally, a party was held for all of us intrepid interpreters to cool off after what had been a very full-on weekend. I reached my bus in good time and arrived back in Nanyo, having had next to no sleep, at 6am. It’s taken me roughly until now (Thursday morning) to recover, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Bring on the next one!
Not Quite Otaku 